Linda Greenhouse Discusses the Shadow Docket, Unitary Executive, and the High Court’s New Playbook
JUDJ-Prepared Summary from October 22, 2025 | Law, Politics, and Power: Perspectives on the Supreme Court. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the speaker.
In a recent America at a Crossroads discussion, Linda Greenhouse—Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, longtime Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times, and senior research scholar at Yale Law School—joined moderator Patt Morrison to unpack how today’s Supreme Court is reshaping American governance. The conversation explored the Court’s growing reliance on the “shadow docket,” the rise of the unitary executive theory, and why explanations from the justices matter for public legitimacy.
Why Every Road Leads to the Court
The modern political moment funnels nearly every national conflict to the Supreme Court. Greenhouse noted that while commentators sometimes label the current bench the “Trump Court” (mirroring earlier eras like the “FDR Court”), the distinctive shift today is more procedural than simply ideological. The Court’s decisions—and non-decisions—arrive through mechanisms that can move policy quickly with minimal public-facing reasoning. That shift, she argued, is altering the balance of power in ways the public is only beginning to grasp.
Shadow vs. Emergency: Same Docket, New Use
Every appellate court has an emergency docket for true time-sensitive questions. What’s new is how often the Supreme Court uses it to make consequential changes without full briefing, oral argument, or signed opinions. During the pandemic, for example, emergency orders redrew the line between public health authority and religious exercise. Greenhouse emphasized that this isn’t just “housekeeping”; it is policymaking that bypasses the transparency of the Court’s merits process.
Orders Without Reasons—and a Legitimacy Bill Comes Due
When the Court grants or denies stays without a rationale, the public is left to infer whether the justices are applying law or advancing politics. Greenhouse put it bluntly: the judiciary’s authority depends on persuasion, and persuasion requires explanation. If the Court does not show its legal work, it risks draining the reservoir of trust that makes its rulings governable in the first place.
The Unitary Executive, From Theory to Practice
A central thread of today’s jurisprudence is the unitary executive theory—the view that Article II vests the President with sweeping control over the executive branch. That stance directly collides with long-standing limits around independent agencies like the FTC and the Federal Reserve. Cases this term could pare back or overturn Humphrey’s Executor (1935), the decision that has buttressed agency independence for nearly a century. Greenhouse flagged an intriguing wrinkle: signals that the Fed might be treated as “special,” though the Court hasn’t explained why.
When Procedure Shapes Policy
Procedural stays can carry profound real-world consequences—affecting whether agencies created by Congress can be dismantled or defanged by executive action while litigation grinds on. Disputes over deploying the National Guard, for instance, highlight how emergency orders can move the boundary lines of federalism and civil-military relations without the sunlight of a full opinion. The result is a politics of provisional decisions that function as durable policy.
What to Watch This Term
Expect pivotal separation-of-powers rulings:
- Removal protections for commissioners at independent agencies.
- Scope of presidential control across the administrative state, including possible carveouts.
- Executive trade authority, where textual statutory limits may constrain sweeping tariff claims.
Across these fronts, the throughline is not only what the Court decides, but how it decides—via merits opinions or emergency orders—and whether it explains itself
Bottom Line
Greenhouse’s message is both cautionary and constructive: legitimacy rests on transparency. If the Court continues to rely on emergency orders without reasons, pressure will mount on its public standing. For citizens, journalists, and lawmakers alike, the task is to track process as closely as outcomes—because in this era, procedure often is policy.
About America at a Crossroads
Since April 2020, America at a Crossroads has produced weekly virtual programs on topics related to the preservation of our democracy, voting rights, freedom of the press, and a wide array of civil rights, including abortion rights, free speech, and free press. America at a Crossroads is a project of Jews United for Democracy & Justice.